A federal judge just destroyed the Trump administration’s attacks on undocumented immigrants’ habeas corpus rights by upholding a 21-day notice requirement for potential deportees.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines, a Trump appointee to the bench in Pennsylvania, ruled that the government could not provide detainees with only seven days to challenge their removal or seek asylum after receiving a deportation order.
In a 15-page ruling that blocked the expedited deportation of a Venezuelan man, Haines provided a detailed hypothetical to demonstrate exactly why seven days would be insufficient for a detainee to have sufficient time to be heard by a court.
“Assume that detainee John Doe … receives notice on June 1, 2026 at 12:00 P.M., that he is subject to removal under the [Alien Enemies Act] and the Proclamation. His only recourse is to file with the Judiciary in habeas,” she wrote.
“Assume that John Doe then begins drafting, through whatever means are available to him, a habeas petition.… Halfway through drafting his petition (or while waiting for a callback from his attorney, or while still looking for one), on June 4 2026, at 5:00 P.M., he is placed on a plane which will arrive in Northern District of Texas” the same day, Haines wrote.
“He has no opportunity to take his partially drafted petition with him or call his attorney (or find an attorney) before he is transferred,” she wrote.
Haines imagined that the detainee might take a day to acclimate to his surroundings or find the means to continue working on his petition or hear back from his attorney — and by that time, around noon on June 6, 2026, “he stands to be removed from the country in just two days.”
“Might there not be a significant risk that this individual will not reach the judiciary before his seven days have run their course, meaning that he would be removed without any hearing whatsoever? Might not his movements from one facility to another, his quest to draft a petition, and/or his search for word from an attorney take even longer than the timeframes that the Court has just described?” Haines wrote.
“The Court cannot help but answer those questions in the affirmative,” she concluded.
In May, Haines upheld Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and his declaration that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was mounting an “incursion” into the United States. In her ruling, though, she rejected the administration’s goal to curb due process for those targeted by the AEA. With the Department of Homeland Security pushed to provide detainees with only 12 to 24 hours, she called for the administration to abide by a three-weeks notice.
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